#102: Frauds And Visionaries – Bethany McLean
Bethany McLean is an investigative journalist and contributing editor for Vanity Fair.
Show notes
Selected links
- Follow Bethany: Website | Twitter
- The Smartest Guys in the Room, by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind
- ‘Is Enron Overpriced?’, Bethany’s March 5, 2001, article for Fortune
- ‘What Caused Enron?: A Capsule Social and Economic History of the 1990’s’, article by John Coffee
- Bad Blood, by John Carreyrou
- The Seven Signs of Ethical Collapse, by Marriane Jennings
- Spy The Lie, by Philip Houston, Michael Floyd and Don Tennant
- Saudi America, by Bethany McLean
- The Undoing Project, by Michael Lewis
Topics discussed
- How did Bethany become a journalist? 4:13
- How did Enron come to be Enron? 6:30
- How did Bethany see through Enron when most others were beguiled by it? 8:33
- What was the reaction to Bethany’s original article expressing skepticism about Enron? 11:35
- Why was Enron an example of ‘legal fraud’? 13:34
- How to spot the “dogs” dressed up as “ducks”. 16:20
- What were the ultimate causes of Enron’s collapse? 19:43
- How did so many smart people at Enron become so corrupted? 30:06
- Bethany’s book recommendations. 32:42
- The fine line between frauds and visionaries. 34:56
- Self-deception. 41:56
- If Elizabeth Holmes succeeded, would the end have justified her means? 45:23
- Elon Musk. 46:54
- The truth about fracking. 55:14
- How does Bethany stay organised as a journalist? 57:17
- How does Bethany put questions to her sources? 58:36
- Balancing accuracy with narrative flair. 59:35
- Which factors help Bethany decide which facts to include in a story and which to omit from it? 1:05:40
- How to construct an effective narrative. 1:11:46
- What business model could scale up investigative journalism? 1:17:54
- How does democracy survive the eroding of journalism’s traditional business model? 1:24:04